1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to access control systems, and more particularly to a feed protocol used to report status and event information in a physical access control system.
2. Description of the Related Art
A physical access control system includes one or more access controllers which are used to restrict access to one or more physical locations by controlling physical barriers, such as doors, turnstiles, elevators, gates, etc. A physical access control system is distinguished from logical access control systems, such as used to restrict access to data or information on a computer system or the like. A physical access control system may further include local controllers and servers for managing message communications, where such messages include event information, status information, alarm information, etc. Conventional physical access control systems used a proprietary or specialized event reporting communication application or messaging service since there was no standard format or syntax for alarm or event reporting. Management technologies, therefore, have been tied directly to the event source since the message format had to be decided upon beforehand to ensure conformance with the syntax. The relationship with the reporter, or producer, and the receiver, or consumer, had to be tightly coupled because it was based on push technology in which the producer asynchronously transmitted the data to the consumer. The tight coupling had to be established before any messages could be sent. The specialized and proprietary nature of conventional physical access control systems along with requisite tight coupling between information producers and consumers made integration very difficult. Integration concerns expanding an existing system such as adding additional controllers or servers or management consoles or the like.
It is desired to provide a messaging service in an access control system that facilitates integration.